Sopheap's Story: A Widow Struggles for Family Life

By Casey Neese

October 3, 2019

Last Updated: May 7, 2012

Editor’s note: This post is part of a series that follows the progress of specific families, starting at the beginning of their work with Heifer. Today's post is the second in a series of  quarterly updates on the progress of Khuon Sopheap and her family. You can read the first post about Sopheap here.

by Heifer Cambodia

Ten months after joining the POG group, Ms. Khuon Sopheap has actively participated in group activities including monthly meetings, a savings program and attending literacy class. Through these technical and non-technical trainings, her knowledge and life skills have been improved while her attitude and behavior have been changed. She has shared what she learned with her family members and other villagers.

During the last four months, Sopheap and her family members keep practicing simple techniques in swine productions. With help from her daughters, Sophea and Sophort, she cleans the pen, troughs and the pigs before feeding them. She puts mosquito nets on the pen to protect the pigs from being bitten by mosquitoes that might affect the pigs’ health, which could lead to adverse weight loss. The family is happy to take good care of their pigs. So far, her family decreased buying commercial feed for feeding the pigs as its price goes up. Instead, the family increases using their local available resources including banana trees, morning glories and so forth for the pigs’ feed by applying knowledge they gained from the training. Moreover, Sophea and Sophort always spend their free time to find aquatic plants from the river as supplementary feed for the pigs. Now each pig is around 60 kilograms, and very healthy. Sopheap hopes she will receive the pigs’ offspring soon.

“Although my pigs do not yet give me income, I can see they are growing from day to day. I really hope they will become my family’s main resource of income when they produce piglets during the next few months. With the piglets I will be able to enhance my swine production,” Sopheap says.

After the flood destroyed her home garden late last year, her family now restores a plot of 15 square meters of land behind the house to grow varieties of vegetables for improving the family members’ nutrition. The family is more aware of sanitation and hygiene through keeping the household campus clean. Now all her family members regularly drink water that has first been boiled.

Sopheap is actively participating in group saving. Starting in June 2011, the total group fund increased up to 1 million Riels (US $250), of which 38,500 Riels belongs to Sopheap. Within this period, Sopheap is able to cash 18,500 Riels as voluntary savings.

“Participation in the group activities gives me huge benefits as we are able to help each other when we face any problem. We can take loans with a very low interest rate from our group to do small business or ease any difficulty in the family,” she says.

Story by: Chheang Sok Mao, Northwest Regional Program Officer
Contribution by: Prak Somathy, Communication and Networking Manager

Sopheap feeds her pigs. She puts mosquito nets on the pen to protect the pigs from being bitten by mosquitoes that might affect the pig's health.
Shopeap works at her kitchen garden. She plants vegetables for improving her family members' nutrition.
Her daughter Sophea boils water for the family members drinking.